Calum and Fraser Brownlee, graduates from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee (DJCAD), have been awarded the inaugural Fleming-Wyfold Bursary, a £10,000 prize plus £4,000 of additional support for a new body of work.
The artists, who make work as the Brownlee Brothers, received the award at the opening of the RSA New Contemporaries (RSA:NC) exhibition in Edinburgh, which features the work of 62 graduates from Scottish art and architecture schools. The Brownlees also won the RSA Sir William Gillies Bequest Award, worth £2,000.
The new Fleming-Wyfold Bursary is the result of a partnership between The Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) and the Fleming-Wyfold Foundation. For the first time, RSA:NC artists will show work with the Fleming-Wyfold Collection in Mayfair.
Fraser Brownlee said: “When you graduate wanting to be an artist, people look at you like you’re daft… For Calum and myself this is the biggest boost possible. It vindicates the choices and sacrifices we made to pursue our passion. It means we can push our practice further by creating new work without financial restrictions.”
With additional critical support and mentoring from curator Susanna Beaumont, the award will develop ambitious new work for the brothers.
“Creating new relationships with artists and galleries and the one-year mentoring included in the bursary will be extremely beneficial,” said Brownlee. “We recently spent a month at the Scottish Sculpture Workshop in Lumsden creating work for New Contemporaries. It was a fantastic opportunity working with bronze and forging steel for the first time. The bursary will continue to fund further opportunities to learn new skills and work with new materials.”
Promoting contemporary Scottish art
The Fleming-Wyfold Foundation maintains a private collection of Scottish Art dating from 1770 to the present day, including works from The Glasgow Boys and The Scottish Colourists.
Rory Fleming, chairman of the foundation’s management committee, said: “This is our first real foray into this arena at this level. The Fleming-Wyfold Bursary is an effective way to help promote the RSA’s work and artists within the contemporary Scottish art scene to a much wider audience in a very tangible way.”
The annual RSA:NC exhibition began in 2009 and now awards over £25,000 of prizes, plus residencies, studio and exhibition awards with partner organisations. Other awards this year include Morgan Cahn, another DJCAD graduate, who received the £150 RSA Chalmers Bursary and The Smart Gallery Exhibition Award to develop a solo exhibition in Aberdeen in 2015.
A full list of this year’s award winners will be published on the RSA website soon.
RSA New Contemporaries continues until 24 March at The Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh. royalscottishacademy.org
The New Scottish Artists exhibition will run 24 March – 31 May at the Fleming Collection, London W1J 8DU. www.flemingcollection.com
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